Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is confident that the border changes outlined in President Donald Trump’s peace plan can’t be stopped, even if Trump himself is voted out of office in November.
“Once the Trump plan is put forward, the goalposts will have been moved, and it will be very difficult for any administration to move them back,” Netanyahu said, speaking to The Jerusalem Post in an interview.
Promising to “move forward” with plans to ‘apply sovereignty’ to contested areas in the West Bank after the mapping process was complete and if his Likud-led alliance was elected in the upcoming parliamentary vote, Netanyahu said that waiting for the US’s November elections would not be an issue.
“Any administration, Democrat or Republican, will have to work by the new realities,” Netanyahu said. “They will have to take the new situation into account…I’m sure the next administration, whatever it will be, will have to consider the fact that there’s a new plan.”
Asked specifically about whether he was concerned by the Democratic candidates, who have openly criticised Trump’s plan, Netanyahu said he was confident that he would be able to “work fine with Democrats or Republicans”.
Deal of the Century
The Trump administration’s long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan was unveiled in January, envisioning a two-state solution, including the recognition of Israeli claims to settler areas in the West Bank, the extension of Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley, and the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The deal offers the Palestinians some $50 billion in infrastructure and investment assistance, and provides a few neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem for a Palestinian state capital. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected the proposal, saying it belonged in the “garbage can of history” and that Jerusalem was “not for sale”.
Netanyahu has vowed to move to extend sovereignty over the contested settler areas in the West Bank if his party won parliamentary elections next month, even if the Palestinians didn’t accept Trump’s deal. Israelis are set to go to the polls for an unprecedented third-in-a-row election in March after votes in April and September failed to break a deadlock between Netanyahu’s Likud-led coalition and the opposition Blue and White Party led by former military commander Benny Gantz.
Top-tier Democratic candidates including Senator Bernie Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden, billionaire Mike Bloomberg, Senator Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg have all criticised the ‘Deal of the Century’ plan, with Sanders calling it an “unacceptable” proposal which will “only perpetuate the conflict,” while Biden described it as a “political stunt” which could spark “unilateral moves” by Tel Aviv to take over territory “and set back peace even more”.
